The popular social media platform Twitter continues to come up with new features inspired by its competitors. The company, which brought the Spaces feature to its users inspired by the Clubhouse application in the past years, also briefly tested the Fleets feature, which works similarly to the Instagram Stories function.
Twitter recently made a major update to its home feed, removing the star icon at the top and rearranging the options users prefer to see on the homepage. The “Home” (algorithmic timeline) and “Latest” (chronological timeline) options in the Star icon have been renamed to “For You” and “Following“, respectively.
These options have been made visible on the homepage. Users can now easily switch between these swipeable options from left to right section at the top of the timeline.
Displaying the feed by separating it under two tabs, Twitter is starting to have more room to recommend content and serve ads without significantly interfering with the social networking experience. If users do not want to check the suggestions of the algorithm, they can easily switch to the “Following” section to check the posts from the accounts they follow.
How to customize your Twitter timeline with lists
In addition to “For you” and “Following” tabs, you can also further customize your home feed. In fact, Twitter has a “Lists” option to organize the accounts that you want to see their tweets. Now, Twitter’s new timeline feature allows you to directly track your lists from your home feed.
Since Twitter timeline flows very fast and it’s highly probable to miss tweets from your favorite accounts, this new update will help you a lot if you are tired of seeing unwanted tweets in your home feed.
Add lists to your home timeline
If you have gathered your favorite accounts in Twitter lists, now you will be able to reach them in your home feed. To customize your feed by adding lists, first go to “Lists.”
As you see there are no “Pinned Lists.” In order to see a list on your timeline you have to pin it by tapping the icon.
Now, you will start following your pinned lists from your home feed. By switching tabs, you will be able to change your Twitter timeline.
Changes made until today
Twitter can sometimes get overreactions from its users regarding the changes it has made. The Twitter timeline was changed many times before, but the reactions from users sometimes forced the company to take a step back. We have witnessed some of these in the past months and years.
In 2016, Twitter, in a big twist, changed its approach, allowing users to view tweets by interests rather than chronological order. This feature allowed users to see “top tweets” determined by an algorithm that matched their interests, not the most recent tweets when they logged into their Twitter account.
However, in response to user feedback, Twitter reversed course in 2018 and left it up to the user to choose whether to prioritize popular tweets or the most recent tweets on the home feed. In other words, while the algorithmic homepage prioritized the best tweets to the users, the chronological homepage was transformed into a one where only the tweets of the following people were sorted according to the time they were posted. Users were given a choice between these two options. This update makes Twitter for users to access the latest tweets by clicking the star icon at the top of the timeline and manage the Twitter home feed according to their preferences.
Then, in March 2022, the social media company, which removed the “chronological order by default” feature and made popular tweets in the timeline default, had to take a step back when this innovation was not liked by the users. In a statement made by Twitter, the following statements were used:
“We heard you –– some of you always want to see latest Tweets first. We’ve switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options.”
Conclusion
Twitter aims to satisfy its users with another innovation it has brought to its home page feed. However, this still doesn’t look that easy. As we mentioned above, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the designs of social media applications such as Twitter are determined by their users. Let’s see if users can get used to this new Twitter timeline and love it.
